Figures of Speech - New Published Poems

Figures of Speech

A few seconds

out from Salisbury train station

there stands

an old native cherry

someone has decorated

with perhaps fifty hung

plastic nursery chairs.

A bright multi-coloured cone

of lights. A mystery May-pole.

A metaphor I will not

unravel in a single journey.

A cipher with as many solutions

as the countless red gum sleepers

from here to the city.

Jeff Guess

Page 63

Window Cleaner

Mitcham Shopping Centre

High and lifted up. He hangs in the sun

filled atrium against two crossed steel bars.

A self-imposed elevation, his shadow is flung

down the mall where startled shoppers are

stopped and gaze up to where his bright yellow

overalls belie what might be a mute

puppet on invisible wires in the mellow

afternoon; or dancing for some circus troupe;

even a strange trapped tropical bird

caught in the glaze of glass and heat and light.

Or an actor from the Theatre of the Absurd

putting on a noiseless play of fear and flight.

He is though only what he is - and why

with his long blade, he wipes and cleans the sky.

Jeff Guess

Page 178

©Jeff Guess 2017